Monday, January 17, 2011

Sharing and not sharing

They say, with good reason, that you should never take any notice of what your close relatives say about your writing. Now that the flu bug has receded from our family, John and I nipped over to Notts on Friday for a belated Christmas reunion, and I was able to give out my family copies of the new edition of The Birth Machine. Today my mum rang me to say that she is 7 chapters in. And she wanted to tell me that this new version is much, much better! Now, she said, with the new, or rather original, structure, it's a story about 'what people do to each other', whereas previously it was more of a one-sided, 'fighting' kind of book, and not nearly as good! But did she say that last when the first edition came out? You bet she didn't....

To turn to less personal matters, the Faber Academy discussion of creative writing on Fictionbitch, which has turned out to be a pretty busy debate, continues with a chance to leave questions for FA tutors Sue Gee and Marcel Theroux.

And, in a not unconnected matter, I'm grateful to Tania Hershman for a link to a Huffington Post articleby Anis Shivani, which provocatively suggests that writers shun all media and social aspects of the writing industry and by implication such things as creative writing classes and workshops....

So glad you enjoyed my link! I think I didn't express enough in my blog post that I didn't exactly take it seriously, and clearly neither did he... but I did like some of what he said anyway. No rules! And funny about your mother, but isn't that what mothers are supposed to say anyway?!

About Me

Elizabeth Baines is a writer of prose fiction and plays. Her collection of short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World (2007), and her novella, Too Many Magpies (2009), are published by Salt. In 2010 Salt also reprinted her first novel, The Birth Machine. Elizabeth has won prizes for her stories and plays including a Giles Cooper Best Radio Play Award and received Sony radio nominations.